Auction! (for the AIDS Walk)

First things first:
This auction is to benefit the Minnesota AIDS Project. All funds raised will go to MAP. The item and the time, effort and materials that went into creating it, as well as any shipping and handling necessary to deliver it to the winner are a donation on my part. Before you bid, please read the small list o' rules and details following the good bit.

The good bit:
This handbag was hand-knit by yours truly. It was worked in two yarns simultaneously. The more visible of the two is a recycled sari silk yarn from Nepal. You see, when those gorgeous saris are woven in India, a leftover off the process are "mill ends"--excess, uneven lengths of silk thread cut from each end of the sari. An enterprising group of women in Nepal have gathered these mill-ends and spin them into yarn, which they then sell online through several distributors. Due to the random nature of the mill-ends, each skein is completely unique and displays within itself a wide range of brilliant, jewel-like colors. And it's SILK.

The base yarn, which is less visible and gives the fabric a uniform density the sari silk cannot achieve on its own is a variegated chenille in a print that was discontinued several years ago. The combination of the naturally unique silk yarn and the rare chenille make this handbag one of a kind.


Here we have a frontal view of the bag. Despite taking about a hundred photos in preparation for this post, I didn't have a single one that really did justice to the richness of the colors in the silk.


The bag with a couple of common items to give a nice idea of its size.


Side view, with a standard paperback inside. There was still plenty of room left in there for a wallet, cell phone and keys, too.

The details:
I'm not eBay. I thought about trying to keep track of "maximum bids"...for about half a second. So, think of this like a live auction, where one person shouts out a bid and the next one goes a little higher, and so on until time's up or there's only one bidder left standing.

We'll start at five dollars. If you have a bid or a question, email it to me. Use the words "blog" and/or "auction" in the subject line to speed it to my notice. I will be putting up an auction tracker on my sidebar, and I will update it as often as I can. Bidding will close at 6:00 p.m. CDT Sunday May 7. I will be watching my email like a hawk from 4:00 that day and updating the auction tracker immediately upon receiving any bids.

If some satisfactory means of making a personal (read: free) delivery to the winner can't be arranged, I will ship to anywhere in the US or Canada at no extra charge. The winner will pay for the item by making a donation in the amount of the final bid on my AIDS Walk page. That way we both know the right amount has gone to the right place. :)

And remember--Mother's Day is coming up! Wouldn't Mom love a silk purse? Of course she would.